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About the Author Doug Sahlin is a photographer, videographer, and Web designer living in Lakeland, Florida. He has written 16 books on computer graphics and office applications and co-authored 3 books on Photoshop and 1 book on digital video. Recent titles include Digital Photography QuickSteps and How To Do Everything with Adobe Acrobat 7.0. Many of his books have been bestsellers at Amazon.com. Doug’s books have been translated into five languages. He uses Flash 8.0 Professional to create Web sites and multimedia presentations for his clients.

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Dedication Dedicated to the memory of my mother, Inez, my best friend and one of the kindest and wisest souls to walk the face of this earth.Author’s Acknowledgments Thanks to Acquisitions Editor Steve Hayes for making this project possi- ble. Special thanks to Project Editor Nicole Sholly and Copy Editor Andy Hollandbeck — an upstanding kind of guy and fellow Frank Zappa fan — for manicuring this work for public consumption. My sincere thanks to the Wiley editorial staff for their support and contribution to this work. Kudos to the lovely and talented Margot Maley Hutchison for being the best literary agent on the planet. Thanks to fellow authors Ken Milburn and Joyce Evans for their continued support and friendship. Special thanks to my friend Bonnie Blake for creative inspiration. Thanks to my friends, mentors, and family — especially you, Karen and Ted. Special thanks to Niki the cat, the best companion an author could hope to have.

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Table of ContentsIntroduction..................................................................1 About This Book...............................................................................................1 Foolish Assumptions .......................................................................................1 Conventions Used in This Book .....................................................................2 What You Don’t Have to Read ........................................................................2 How This Book Is Organized...........................................................................3 Part I: Building the Perfect Beast .........................................................3 Part II: Fleshing Out Your Design..........................................................3 Part III: Adding Bells and Whistles .......................................................3 Part IV: Sharing Your Site with the World............................................4 Part V: The Part of Tens.........................................................................4 The appendix ..........................................................................................4 The color insert ......................................................................................4 The companion Web site .......................................................................5 Icons Used in This Book..................................................................................5 Where to Go from Here....................................................................................6Part I: Building the Perfect Beast...................................7 Chapter 1: Creating the Perfect Flash Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Flash versus HTML . . . The Winner Is? .........................................................9 Setting Goals for the Design..........................................................................11 Planning Your Site ..........................................................................................11 Gathering Assets for Your Site......................................................................12 Building the Interface ....................................................................................12 Simplifying your workflow with symbols ..........................................13 A tall tale of buttons and navigation menus .....................................14 Adding text and other delights...........................................................14 Adding the WOW Factor................................................................................15 Making your site interactive with ActionScript................................16 Get a move on with animation............................................................17 Soundtracks and other operatic delights..........................................18 Optimizing and Publishing Your Site ...........................................................18 Testing your design..............................................................................19 Getting the bugs out.............................................................................19 Optimizing the beast............................................................................20 Publishing and uploading your brainchild........................................20

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Introduction S o you want to be a Flash Web designer, but you can’t design Flash Web sites in a flash? It all takes time. And it also requires a modicum of knowl- edge, which is where this book comes in. If you’ve read other Flash how-to books, you know that they cover the sundry topics like how to create really cool animations with Flash. However, this book takes you to the next level and shows you how to create a Flash Web site from soup to nuts.About This Book Here are some of the things you can do with this book: ߜ Use it as a doorstop. (Kidding!) ߜ Plan a Flash Web site. ߜ Create a lean, fast-loading Flash interface. ߜ Create content for your Flash Web site. ߜ Create interactive Web sites with Flash. ߜ Optimize and publish your Flash Web site. ߜ Add eye candy to your Flash Web site. ߜ Create an e-commerce Flash Web site. ߜ Debug your ActionScript. ߜ Sharpen your ability to deal with clients.Foolish Assumptions In order to do most anything, you need some specific tools, just a bit of know- how, and perchance a bit of luck mingled with creativity. When you need to design a Flash Web site, you need the proper tools. For this book, that tool is Flash 8. And if you’re going to do cool stuff, like encode your own video, you need Flash 8 Professional.

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2 Building Flash Web Sites For Dummies You should know your way around the Flash workspace. But don’t worry; I do give you a brief refresher course on some of the basic Flash stuff, like creat- ing animations, working with text, and so on. When you create animations, and for that matter format text, choose colors, and so on, you use the Properties Inspector to set the parameters for the object with which you are working. Therefore, you should have a working knowledge of the Properties Inspector. I also show you how to work with ActionScript. However, in order to follow along, you should have a basic knowledge of the Actions panel. Another thing you should know is how to manipulate HTML documents. Although your main work in this book uses Flash, you still have to do some editing to the HTML document in which your Flash Web site is embedded. If you have working knowledge of an HTML editor, such as Dreamweaver, you’re one step ahead of the game. Another benefit of Dreamweaver is the fact that you can use the software to upload files to the Web provider that hosts the Web site. Conventions Used in This Book I’m not a conventional kind of guy. But of course, without some kind of con- ventions, such as punctuation and grammar, people wouldn’t be able to understand each other. This book is no different. Without conventions, you’d have no idea of what to do or when to do it. Therefore, we use the following conventions in this book. When you’re asked to input information — you know, type something — the required input is boldfaced. When you see exam- ples of ActionScript code, URLs, and e-mail addresses, these are in a monofont typeface, like so: myEmail@myserver.com. New terms are italicized. What You Don’t Have to Read This is one of those nonlinear type of books, which means that you don’t have to read it in order. Although the book can be read as a whole, feel free to jump to the section that contains the information you need. You’ll get a good idea of what’s in each section by reading the tips and notes. And of course, a picture is always worth a thousand words: You can look at the figures to get an idea of what’s presented in each section; if the picture doesn’t relate to the information you’re looking for, feel free to skip that section. Also, you can feel free to skip any sections wearing a Technical Stuff icon.

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Introduction 3How This Book Is Organized Building Flash Web Sites For Dummies is split into five parts. You don’t have to read the book sequentially, and you don’t even have to read all the sections in any particular chapter. You can use the Table of Contents and the Index to find the information you need and quickly get your answer. In this section, I briefly describe what you’ll find in each part. Part I: Building the Perfect Beast In this part, I present information on how to plan your Flash Web site prior to building it. I show you several things you should consider prior to building the site, as well as techniques for working with clients. I show you how to create a mock-up for your client and how to begin gathering assets for your Web site before launching Flash. Part II: Fleshing Out Your Design After you’re done with the preliminaries, you can start creating some actual content, which is what this part is all about. First, I show you how to make an interface. I know what you’re thinking: Why just an interface? Well, in order to have a lean and mean Web site, you create a fast-loading interface into which you load other content. In this part, I also show you how to create text for the Web site and how to create some spiffy navigation bars and buttons, as well as how to animate your site. Part III: Adding Bells and Whistles So what’s a Flash Web site without bells and whistles? Boring! In this part, I show you how to kick it up a notch. I introduce you to the wonders of ActionScript and what it can do for you, your site, or your client’s site. I also show you how to create some spiffy things with ActionScript, like a clock that shows Web site visitors what time it is. Other interesting tidbits include how to create a Flash photo gallery, add video to your Web site, create an e-commerce site, and more.

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4 Building Flash Web Sites For Dummies Part IV: Sharing Your Site with the World If you build it, they will come. But first you have to optimize the site for the viewing public and then publish it, the main topic of discussion in — you guessed it — this part of the book. First, I show you how to make your site lean and mean by getting rid of things that are not needed. I also give you other tips and techniques you can use to create a Skinny Minny Web site. Then I show you how to exterminate pesky little bugs in your ActionScript. And finally, I show you how to publish your site. Part V: The Part of Tens In the Part of Tens, you’ll find three chapters. Each chapter contains ten tidbits — you know, useful nuggets of information — about creating Flash Web sites. I share with you some tips for creating trouble-free Flash Web sites, tips for dealing with clients, and tips for promoting your site. And I’ve done so much work on this introduction that I’m going to take this moment to take ten. The appendix Although Flash is super-popular, it’s not the easiest application in the world to master. So I’ve added this handy appendix, which lists several Flash Internet resources. I waxed my board and actually surfed to each site to verify that it’s still there as of this writing. But you know how the Net is . . . here today, gone tomorrow. The color insert Because this book is printed in black and white, I’ve included a color insert so that you can see at least some examples of what you can create with the techniques in the book in full, glorious color. In this section, you find screen- shots of Flash Web sites under construction. You also find examples of images being optimized for use in Flash Web sites, as well as text being added to a Flash Web site. Because it’s all in grand and glorious color, this section gives you, the reader, a visual feast and examples of what you can do when creating your own Flash Web site.

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Introduction 5 The companion Web site I want to make Flash source files available to you, so this book has an accompanying Web site. The site is located at www.dummies.com/go/ flashwebsites. There, you can find folders for the chapters in this book. In each chapter’s folder, you can find FLA files that give you an example of a project created using the topics covered in that particular chapter.Icons Used in This Book What’s a For Dummies book without icons pointing you in the direction of really great information that’s sure to help you along your way? In this section, I briefly describe each icon I use in this book. The Tip icon points out helpful information that is likely to make your job easier. This icon marks a generally interesting and useful fact — something that you might want to remember for later use. The Warning icon highlights lurking danger. With this icon, I’m telling you to pay attention and proceed with caution. When you see this icon, you know that there’s techie stuff nearby. If you’re not feeling very techie, you can skip this info. I’ve placed several files on the Web for your use. This icon denotes an activity where you might want to first download the named file before continuing.

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6 Building Flash Web Sites For Dummies Where to Go from Here Okay. So now that you’ve read this far, or maybe you started with this section of the intro, and you need someone to tell you where to go. Not a problem. If you want to plan your site and get everything ready to rock and roll before launching Flash, check out Part I. In Chapter 1, I give you the skinny on every- thing you need to do while designing a Flash Web site. In Chapter 2, I show you how to get all your ducks in a row by gathering all the information and assets you need to hit the ground running. If you’re a take-charge, grab-the-bull-by-the-horns, press-on-regardless kind of person, you’ll find the information you need to start designing your site in Part II. In Chapter 3, I show how to create the site interface, whereas in Chapter 4, I show you everything you ever wanted to know — well almost — about Flash text but were afraid to ask. In Chapter 5, I show you how to add site navigation, and if you need motion in your Flash Web site, I show you how to get animated in Chapter 6. If bells and whistles are your thing, or your client’s thing, you can easily include them using Flash. If you want cool Flash stuff, mosey on over to Part III. Here I show you how to add cool things to your Web site with ActionScript and also show you how to add Flash eye candy to your site. If your site is going to be commercial, check out Chapter 10. Part IV is all about finalizing your site and then publishing it. In Chapter 12, I show you how to optimize your site and get the bugs out of your Action- Script. In Chapter 13, I show you how to publish your site. If you’re in the mood for a hodge-podge of useful information about working with Flash, working with clients, and promoting your site, check out Part V, which is where you find the Part of Tens chapters. Each chapter contains ten — at least by my abacus — sections of useful information.

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In this part . . .I show you everything you need to know to hit the ground running. I show you all the steps involved increating a Flash Web site and then show you how to beginlaying out the Web site.If you’re working with clients, you’ll find useful tidbits onhow to deal with them and how to figure out exactly whatthey want. After you have that information in hand, youcreate a mockup for the client, a task I show you how toaccomplish in this part.Other topics of discussion include gathering materials forthe Web site and optimizing images and video in otherapplications prior to working in Flash.

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Chapter 1 Creating the Perfect Flash SiteIn This Chapterᮣ Planning your Flash siteᮣ Assembling the site assetsᮣ Building the Flash siteᮣ Publishing your site T he first page of Chapter 1 is always an exciting place in any book. It’s where you find out what’s in store for you in the upcoming pages. Or hey, maybe you’ve already read three chapters and have just decided to restart at the beginning. (What a novel concept!) Well, you can get away with that when reading a book, but if you try to create an interface for your Flash site without first having done your homework, it’s almost like trying to fly without knowing how to operate an airplane — but not nearly as hazardous to your health. In this chapter, I show you the steps you go through to create a Flash site. And like anything else you build, there is a process. Whether you’re creating a Flash site for your son’s baseball team or for your boss — who plopped an unopened box on your desk that says “Flash Professional 8” and said, “Build me a Flash site” — if you don’t approach the process logically, you’re destined to have more than your share of headaches. Like the self-help gurus say, “Fail to plan, and you plan to fail.”Flash versus HTML . . . The Winner Is? To Flash or not to Flash, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to create a ho-hum HTML Web site or to up the ante with a Flash design with more bells and whistles than . . . but I digress. Flash has been around for a long time. In comparison, HTML is almost ancient. Flash has gone through a rapid growth and development spurt since Flash 4. HTML is now in version 4.0 and won’t be developed anymore. In fact, HTML 4.0 has been around since 1998, which is practically the Jurassic age in regards to computers and Internet technology. Savvy designers have come up with all

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10 Part I: Building the Perfect Beast kinds of imaginative coding and workarounds to create some really cool Web sites with HTML. HTML designers use JavaScript to add interactivity to their designs. They write complex code to embed video and audio in their designs, and they use form elements to create interactive forms to gather information, to create virtual shopping carts, and so on. Or maybe they’re lucky and have a good WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML application, like Dreamweaver, that takes care of a lot of the grunt work. Either way, there’s still a steep learning curve to create anything more complex than a hum-drum, text-only Web page sprinkled with the odd JPEG image or three. Simply put, modern-day Web designers need to know a lot. And they often have to resort to other colleagues in order to create the latest “all-singing, all-dancing” Web design that will blow the socks off their client’s competitors. However, when you want to have your cake and eat it too, nothing beats Flash. You have everything you need within the application to add all of the interactivity and WOW factor the law allows, and then some. Lots of people think of Flash as a really cool animation tool. But it’s so much more than that. You can build high-powered, compelling Web sites with Flash. And the only time HTML comes into the picture is as the document within which you embed your Flash Web site. Figure 1-1 shows a cool Flash Web site. Figure 1-1: Flash makes it possible for you to design interactive Web sites with pizzazz.

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Chapter 1: Creating the Perfect Flash Site 11 Within Flash is a powerful scripting language known as ActionScript, which bears a similarity to JavaScript. If the design you envision includes full- motion video, that’s available from within Flash as well. In fact, Flash has its own video codec (an algorithm that compresses the movie when it is ren- dered, and decompresses the movie when it is viewed) called FLV (Flash Video). But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. You say you want to gather information from customers at your Flash site? Piece of cake! You can design an artistic Flash form that makes its HTML brother look positively archaic. And you can do all of this within Flash. I show you how to incorporate these elements and more in your Flash Web design in the upcoming chapters.Setting Goals for the Design Before you can build the site, you need some kind of road map. Trying to create a Flash movie without a plan is like trying to drive from Florida to Alaska without a map or planned route. You may get there, but you’ll end up taking a world of detours and wrong turns. The easiest way to know where you’re going with your Flash Web design is to interview the client. In fact, this step is an absolute necessity. After all, how can you create a proposal if you don’t know what the client wants? If the Web site is for a friend or a family member, the interview process will probably be an ongoing give-and-take of ideas. After the goals for the design have been defined, put it in writing and get the client to sign off on it. Remember, no job is done until the paperwork is handled. And in the case of a Web design, no job should be started until the paperwork is handled. I discuss this issue in more depth in Chapter 2.Planning Your Site After you have the goals for your design on paper, it’s time to put you design paper again. Yes, you read correctly. Only this time, you’re not putting words on paper; you’re sketching the design. The sketch doesn’t have to be elaborate — just enough to give you a visual clue as to what the finished design will look like. You can create a series of sketches on a legal pad, an illustration applica- tion, or, if you’re meeting with the client in a restaurant, a napkin works well as a makeshift sketchpad. If you prefer to be a little more elaborate, you can sketch your design and actually build different iterations of the design in Macromedia Fireworks (an application used to create graphics, edit images, and create HTML for Web sites). After the sketch is done, you’ll know exactly what you need to build the site. The sketch also gives you an idea of what, if any, ActionScript you need to pull off the design. Don’t worry, I show you everything you need to know about ActionScript for a Flash Web design in Chapter 7.

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12 Part I: Building the Perfect Beast Gathering Assets for Your Site After you create preliminary sketches for your site, it’s time to get your ducks in a row, so to speak. In this phase of the project, you get or create everything that cannot be created in Flash and store it in a neat little folder. There’s nothing worse than being two-thirds of the way into your project, with the creative juices flowing like a river in flood, only to discover that you don’t have everything you need to complete the project. The assets you gather will vary depending on what your design encompasses. If your site has a slide show, you’ll gather the images, optimize them for Web site viewing, and size them to suit your design. Granted, you can do some of this work in Flash. However, a Web-friendly image editing application like Fireworks will give you more options. Other assets you may have to gather are sound clips and full-motion video. Animation? Forget it. You can do all that in Flash. Chapter 2 has more about gathering the necessary assets. Building the Interface Every good Web site needs an interface. In a nutshell, an interface is a graphic device that your viewers can use to navigate from one part of the site to another. The acronym for an interface is GUI — graphical user interface. The interface generally consists of a background, a banner, and navigation buttons. You can build most of the assets for your interface in Flash. However, some designers prefer to lay out the background for the interface in an application like Fireworks and then import the graphic into their Flash design. You’ll create many parts of the interface by using Flash drawing tools. When you create an object with Flash drawing tools, you create a vector object. Vector objects are graphic objects that can be scaled infinitely, that is, unless the object has a complex gradient (a fill that consists of two or more colors blended together in a linear or radial manner). Some Flash Web designers prefer to create their vector objects in a drawing application like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. Some Flash designers throw everything but the kitchen sink at their viewers. This is fine if you’re creating a simple site with only a little navigation. However, when you add bells and whistles like video and full-color bitmaps, you run the risk of creating a Flash movie with a file size slightly smaller than the Trump Tower. When you create a site that big, trying to download it is like trying to drain an Olympic-size swimming pool with a garden hose; it takes a long time. I show you how to create a Web-friendly interface and then load content into the interface in order to manage a Flash Web site that has a humongous amount of content. Figure 1-2 shows a cool Flash interface, complete with a hideaway control panel that enables users to change interface colors and so on.

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Chapter 1: Creating the Perfect Flash Site 13Figure 1-2: You can create uniqueinterfaces by using Flash. Simplifying your workflow with symbols So you have an idea for your Flash Web site, but you shudder at the thought of creating all the artwork. It’s a good thing you decided to create a Flash Web site, because in Flash, anything you create can be converted into a symbol. Symbols come in three flavors: graphic, button, and movie clip. The beauty of symbols is that they’re reusable. You can add a symbol wherever you need one without breaking the bandwidth bank. When you take a symbol from the Library and add it to the timeline, you create a symbol instance. When the instance is encountered, the Flash Player re-creates it from the information in the Library. Figure 1-3 shows a Library that lacks a live librarian but is chock- full of symbols. And guess what? You can have a symbol within a symbol, which in Flash is known as nesting. This opens all manner of possibilities for the creative Flash Web designer. You can also house ActionScript in the Movie Clip symbol. This makes it possible for you to use the same ActionScript in other parts of your movie, or for that matter, in other movies. Now how cool is that? I give you a symbolic baptism by fire in Chapter 3.

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14 Part I: Building the Perfect Beast Figure 1-3: You simplify your work- flow when you use symbols. A tall tale of buttons and navigation menus An important part of any interface is the navigation menu. The navigation menu consists of buttons. But you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to create a navigation menu. Whenever you create a button, or for that matter any other symbol, it’s stored in the Flash Library. Unlike your local library, you don’t need a card to take something from the Library, you just do it. I show you how to create a navigation menu by creating one button, duplicating the button for the other links in your navigation menu, and then editing the dupli- cated buttons. It’s really child’s play after you get the hang of it. If you have lots of content in your Web site, you might have to stuff the but- tons into drop-down menus. Creating a drop-down menu might seem rather labor-intensive, especially if your site holds a whole lot of buttons that link to different content. Not to worry, in Chapter 5, I show you how to whip up a vertical or horizontal drop-down menu like the one in Figure 1-4 in no time. In this figure, the second row of buttons drops down when the Portfolio button is clicked. Adding text and other delights Sometimes you have to tell instead of show. When you’re faced with this task, you need to create text. You may also need text for buttons. Creating text in Flash is almost as easy as working with your favorite word processor. The most basic form of Flash text is static text. When you create static text, it just

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Chapter 1: Creating the Perfect Flash Site 15 sits there and gets the word out. You can make pretty static text by choosing a fancy font and rainbow colors, or you can create ho-hum text by using the basic Flash fonts dressed up in one of Halloween’s favorite colors: jet black. Flash offers two other forms of text: input and dynamic. Input text accepts information from your Flash site’s visitors. This information can be stored in a variable. Dynamic text is just the opposite: It takes information from a vari- able and displays it within your Flash movie. You can use this dynamic duo to personalize a viewer’s visit to your site. You can also use it to store a visitor’s information when shopping in your Flash e-Store. I show you how to create fancy (and not-so-fancy) Flash text in Chapter 4. Figure 1-4: You can stuff 50 pounds ofbuttons into a svelte drop-down menu.Adding the WOW Factor The indescribable WOW factor is something that can only be experienced with the senses. Sight and sound make a Flash site pop. And it’s something that’s hard to do with HTML, but relatively easy to do with Flash. You say you want to introduce your site with a bang? You can — literally. All the bells and whistles you need to create an award-winning Flash site that’ll rock your visi- tors’ worlds are included with Flash. All you have to do is harness the power. I show you how in Part III.

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16 Part I: Building the Perfect Beast Making your site interactive with ActionScript The thought of writing code strikes fear into the heart of any Web designer — with the exception of card-carrying geeks, also known as Web developers. Flash ActionScript, however, is a non-geek’s answer to code. All you have to know is which action to use to pull off an effect. With Script Assist in Flash 8, you select the action and then fill in the parameters. You don’t have to know how to enter code with Script Assist, which is a blessing after having to man- ually script everything in Flash MX 2004. You’ve probably seen plenty of Web sites with Flash intros. Virtually anyone with the slightest bit of Flashpertise can put together one of those. But what separates the men from the boys is the clever use of ActionScript. The first place you’ll use ActionScript is creating a preloader. A preloader is either a graphic, animation, or text that displays while enough content loads for the main Flash movie to play without interruption. Are preloaders neces- sary? Well, sometimes. If your audience accesses the Internet via a dialup connection, a preloader ensures that enough information loads to view your design without interruption. Some Flash designers go over the top with pre- loaders that contain so many bells and whistles that it loads slowly and needs a pre-preloader of its own. How’s that for redundancy? In Chapter 8, I show you how to create a preloader, such as the one shown in Figure 1-5. Figure 1-5: You use ActionScript to create a preloader. If you want a unique menu, you can use ActionScript to create a drag-and- drop menu. Whether you create a cool drag-and-drop menu or a conventional navigation bar, when your visitors click a button, you can literally show them where to go. And when they get there, you can up the ante with ActionScript. You can use ActionScript for games, to create animated banners, to create moving menus, to add the time of day to your Web site, and much more. Figure 1-6 shows a Flash Web site with some ActionScript bells and whistles.

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Chapter 1: Creating the Perfect Flash Site 17 Figure 1-6: You addinteractivitywith Action- Script. Get a move on with animation The clever use of animation gets the attention of your visitors and has them returning on a regular basis. If you create a tricked-out navigation menu, you can use animation to instruct your visitors how to use it. And if you’re really adventurous, you can use animation to create a text banner with text that dances or flies into position, such as the one shown in Figure 1-7. Animation takes place on a timeline. The timeline is broken down into frames. The number of frames that occupy one second of the timeline is determined by the frame rate of the movie. The more frames you have, the smoother the motion. However, a higher frame rate increases the file size. You can find out all about frames and keyframes and blank keyframes, oh my, in Chapter 6. If you’ve created animation in the past, you may have meticulously made changes on every frame to get it to work. However, with Flash, you can auto- mate your animations. All you need to do is create a symbol, a few keyframes, and let motion tweening do the rest. Another cool way to attract attention is with an animated banner. I show you almost everything you wanted to know about animation but were afraid to ask in Chapter 6.

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18 Part I: Building the Perfect Beast Figure 1-7: You can WOW your audience with dancing text banners. Flash has another form of automated animation known as shape tweening. Shape tweening can be used on editable shapes to change them into different shapes. Shape tweening isn’t sophisticated enough to morph your ex-significant- other into a donkey, but it can create interesting animations. Soundtracks and other operatic delights Flash soundtracks can be a joyful noise or irritating enough to make your viewers hightail it without ever looking at your site. Everyone has different musical tastes; that’s why there are so many music genres. Instead of subject- ing your visitors to your personal taste in music, you can give them a choice. And to go with the choice, you can put the viewer in control of the experience with a sound controller. Now how cool is that? I show you how to add sound to your site in Chapter 8. You can also add sound to buttons. If you’re a photographer showing off your portfolio with a Flash Web site, what would be cooler than a shutter click when one of your visitors clicks a button? I show you how to make noisy but- tons in Chapter 5. Optimizing and Publishing Your Site If you build it, they will come. But will they stay? The answer to that question is no if you create a Web site that takes a long time to load. The average Web surfer has the attention span of a sand flea, and that isn’t very long. If you want your visitors to delve deeply into your site, you have to give them some- thing to look at almost immediately. The secret to creating a quick-loading site is to carefully plan the site, create a skinny interface, and load content into the interface, which is what I show you how to do in this book. If you get to the

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Chapter 1: Creating the Perfect Flash Site 19 eleventh hour and you have a 2MB site that takes eons to load, well, there’s not much you can do except start all over again. But if you have a svelte siren of a Flash site, you can make the site load even faster by optimizing it. See Chapter 12 to find out how. Testing your design Test, test, and then test again. That should be the motto of every Flash designer. There’s nothing more frustrating than being nearly finished, just to find a glaring error in your logic, or, for that matter, in the ActionScript, that prevents the site from doing all you wanted. It’s in your best interest to test early and test often. You can do some testing in authoring mode, and do a full-fledged test in another window, as shown in Figure 1-8. I show you how to test your site in Chapter 13. Figure 1-8: You test your site prior topublishing it. Getting the bugs out If your Web site contains ActionScript, variables, and dynamic text, you have a recipe for disaster if you don’t know how to debug your site. Murphy’s Law can and will raise its ugly head. But you can nip Murphy in the bud by using Flash’s powerful debugger. You can track every variable in your Flash movie as well as in your ActionScript. However, even at the default frame rate, a snippet of ActionScript code executes in 1⁄12 of a second. In other words, things happen so fast that you can’t track them without a little help from a friend. Those friends are known as breakpoints (not to be confused with the formerly popular break dance), which you place on complicated lines of ActionScript. A breakpoint stops ActionScript cold in its tracks when you debug your movie. After getting the skinny on what your code is doing, you resume the movie from within the Debugger (more on that in Chapter 12), shown in Figure 1-9.

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20 Part I: Building the Perfect Beast Figure 1-9: You can nip any glitches in your ActionScript with the Debugger. Optimizing the beast After you get the bugs out, you have some housecleaning to do. You need to optimize your Flash movie in order for it to load as quickly as possible. One of the first things you do is clean out the Library. Publishing a Flash movie with unused symbols in the Library is like preparing a car for the Indy 500 and leaving a whole bunch of extra parts in the engine compartment; the extra baggage makes the Web page load slower. Other issues you’ll deal with while optimizing the site are the quality of the images and the data rate of any sounds in your movie. Optimizing your Flash movie means it will load faster, which is a good thing for your site’s viewers. I show you how to optimize your Flash Web site in Chapter 12. Publishing and uploading your brainchild After creating your Flash site, it’s time to share it with the world, or at least with a few close friends. To convert your Flash document into a Flash movie, you publish it. When you publish the movie, you create an SWF file and an HTML file into which your movie is embedded. Or if you create a large Flash site, you publish several SWF files that load into your interface, which is yet another SWF file. The interface SWF file is embedded in an HTML document, which you also publish. When you publish a Flash movie, you have several decisions to make that deter- mine who can view your Flash movie. After you publish your Flash Web site, you upload it to your server. But not to worry, publishing and uploading a Flash movie isn’t rocket science. I show you everything you need to know about pub- lishing and uploading Flash movies, and maybe a little more, in Chapter 13.

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Chapter 2 Before You Build Your SiteIn This Chapterᮣ Planning your siteᮣ Getting information from your clientᮣ Knowing your target audienceᮣ Creating a storyboardᮣ Gathering raw material for the site I t is always best to begin at the beginning. I know that sounds like useless advice, but many Web designers launch Flash as soon as they think they know where they’re going. Then, lo and behold, they start assembling a Flash document for their Web site and find out that they don’t have a clue. Planning and doing legwork before you actually start building the site takes time, but in the long run, it saves time. To quote George Harrison, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” In this chapter, I show you how to lay out a path that ensures success. You find out how to get your ducks in a row ahead of time by getting all the necessary information from your client and then gathering all of the assets you can’t build in Flash.Knowing Your Mission The Empire State Building in New York City is a monument that has stood the test of time. The construction crew didn’t just pull into town, set up some scaffolding, and start raising some steel. They had a well-thought-out plan of attack and a set of blueprints. Building a Flash Web site is not nearly as daunting as building a skyscraper, but it is a task best not left to chance. In the upcoming sections, I show you how to work with clients and get a grip on the audience that will be viewing your Flash Web site.

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22 Part I: Building the Perfect Beast Working with clients You probably know the old adage that the client is always right. But in reality, the client is always the client. When you work with a prospective client, your first task is to size him or her up. Does the client have a firm idea of the mes- sage he or she wants to get across with the site you’ll be designing? If the client frequently changes his mind — you know, waffles — during your initial meeting, that’s a red flag that he’ll probably change his mind once or twice while you’re creating the site. Be sure to factor this in when creating your proposal and, of course, when you’re estimating the price you’ll charge the client for your services. Remember that the client is also sizing you up. When you’re working with a client, you’re in a sales situation: You’re selling yourself and your services. Your initial session with the client will be give and take. The client will ask you a lot of questions, and you’ll ask the client a lot of questions to get an idea of your client’s needs. Sometimes it’s appropriate to answer a question with a question. One very good question/answer is, “Why is that important to you?” The answer your client gives you is valuable information you can later use to overcome any objections. Another thing you should do up front is establish your value. When you tell the client about your services, don’t just blurt out facts. The client wants to listen to radio station WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). So when you tell the client something — for example, that your Flash sites are fast-loading — you’re telling the client a feature of your services. Back that up with why it’s impor- tant for the customer. In this case, you tell the customer that your fast-loading site will prevent potential visitors from losing interest while waiting for con- tent to load and surfing to another site. Another good sales tool is a portfolio. You can use screen-capture hardware, such as SnagIt, to capture still images of your best Flash Web sites. You can then print these out on high-quality paper and put them in a professional- looking portfolio. A picture is worth a thousand words. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, a moving picture must be worth a gazillion. In this regard, you can bring your laptop computer to the meeting with your client. Publish a few of your best Flash designs and store them on your laptop. Create desktop short- cuts to each Web site. Then, during the course of the client consultation, you can quickly show examples of your work by clicking the applicable shortcut.

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Chapter 2: Before You Build Your Site 23Making it crystal clear witha client questionnaireWhether you meet in person or do business over the Internet, you can get asolid grasp on your customer’s expectations if you have the client fill outa questionnaire. Many Web designers have a questionnaire that potentialclients can fill out and submit on their Web sites. The following is a list ofuseful questions you can ask your potential client to get a better idea of thetype of Web site he or she desires: ߜ What type of business or organization are you trying to promote? ߜ Do you have a Web hosting service? ߜ Do you have a Web domain name reserved? ߜ Do you have a logo? If not, will you need me to design one? ߜ What is the purpose or goal of your Web site? • Promote products? • Sell products? • Create customer awareness? • Foster customer service? • Gather customer feedback? • Distribute company information via an internal Web site? ߜ How many sections will your Web site need? ߜ Will your customers be ordering products online? ߜ Will you provide the text for your Web site? ߜ Will you need full-motion video on your Web site? ߜ Do you want a soundtrack? If so, do you want me to provide a sound controller?The answers to these questions will give you some of the information youneed to prepare a quote.

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24 Part I: Building the Perfect Beast Defining your target audience After meeting with your client, you’ll have a good idea of what your target audi- ence is. This will determine a good deal of the content you’ll add to your Flash Web site. The age and income level of your target audience determines the content for the site. For example, if you’re creating a site for baby boomers, don’t use a hip-hop soundtrack for background music. After you define your target audience, you’ll know which part of the country or world they reside in. This will also give you an idea of what type of connection they use to surf the Internet, which will determine the bandwidth you can pump into your design. What’s the Bandwidth, Kenneth? Another thing you’ll identify when you define your target audience is the type of equipment they’re likely to use to connect to the Internet. This factor determines the type of content you can put into your Flash Web site. If your target audience uses a DSL or cable modem, you have considerably more leeway than if your audience uses a dialup modem. The overall bandwidth pipeline is determined when your movie is finished. However, the techniques I show you to create Flash Web sites feature a reasonably svelte interface into which content is loaded. However, the bandwidth issue is a factor with the individual content you load into the interface. For example, if your target audience accesses the Internet with a dialup modem, you’ll have to apply more compression to the images and video that will be displayed. You will also have to use a lower frame rate to ensure that the content you load into the interface has a smaller file size and will load quickly. Importing Flash video is discussed in Chapter 9. I show you how to batch process video with the Flash 8 Video Encoder in an upcoming section in this chapter. Soundtracks are another factor in bandwidth. For a dialup audience, you’ll have to specify a lower bit rate so that the music streams into the viewer’s Flash Player without any interruptions. I show you how to add background music to your site in Chapter 8. A tale of two bandwidths It’s real simple when your entire target audience accesses the Internet in the same manner. But what happens when you have a mixed audience? Well, unfortunately, you end up creating two versions of your Web site: a skinny version for people who access the Internet with a dialup modem, and a more robust version with high-quality graphics, video, and sound. To head your viewers off at the pass, so to speak, you create an entry portal with links to the dialup and broadband versions, as shown in Figure 2-1.

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Chapter 2: Before You Build Your Site 25 Figure 2-1: You create an HTML portal to direct viewers tothe versionof your site that suits theirconnection speed. Do you need Freddy the Preloader? Bandwidth is one issue, and the file size of each Flash movie that you load into the main interface is another. Even though you have a lean-and-mean interface, you can still run into a bandwidth issue with content you load into the interface. Flash movies are streaming content. The movie begins playing as soon as the Flash Player downloads enough information. However, you may have some frames with so much content that the Flash movie stops dead in its tracks. This is annoying enough. But the problem is exacerbated (love that word), when you’ve got an item such as a soundtrack that has already loaded and continues to play while the rest of the content pauses until enough information downloads for the movie to advance to the next frame. Talk about your bad lip-synch. You’ll be able to ferret out this information when your content is created. However, this doesn’t help you at the beginning of the project, especially when you’re creating a bid for the client. So do you have to waffle and tell the client that you might have to bill them additional for a preloader (which I discuss in Chapter 8)? No. You can safely assume that you should include a preloader in your bid if the following are to be included in the content:

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26 Part I: Building the Perfect Beast ߜ Streaming video ߜ Music soundtrack ߜ Extensive use of bitmap images, especially if they occur near the start of the movie When you present a proposal to a client, leave a spot for the client to accept the proposal. Never begin work until the client returns the signed proposal. Put Your Ideas Down on Paper At this stage of the workflow, you have a pretty good idea of where you’re headed. Your client has given you enough information to begin laying out the design. Now it’s your turn to bring your client’s vision to life. Before you launch Flash and start creating symbols and graphics with reckless abandon, take a deep breath and prepare to do some creative mind mapping in your favorite graphics application. After you have a rough handle on the design, you can start laying out different versions of the design for client approval. Mind mapping your brainstorm Most people think of mind mapping as visual graffiti filled with circles and words of wisdom. When you mind map to create a Flash Web design, you can jot the design down on paper. However, you’ll have a lot more control if you use an illustration application or a good image editing/Web design applica- tion such as Fireworks. The following steps give you a starting point for your own creative mind mapping: 1. Launch Fireworks. 2. Create a new document that’s the same size as your Flash Web site. The default size for a Flash document is 550 pixels by 400 pixels. Eventually, you’re going to use a variation of your mind map to show your design ideas to your client. If you’re going to provide the client with a printed image, specify an image resolution of 300 dpi. If you’re going to e-mail images to your customer, specify an image resolution of 72 dpi. 3. Use the drawing tools to map out the various sections of your Flash Web site. Traditional design calls for a banner and a vertical or horizontal menu. 4. When creating shapes, choose colors to suit your design. 5. Add images and text as placeholders for other content. Figure 2-2 shows the results of a mind mapping session in Fireworks.

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Chapter 2: Before You Build Your Site 27 Figure 2-2:You can use an image editing application to map outyour design. You can create an effective color scheme by sampling colors from your favorite image. Creating a storyboard After you have a couple of ideas on how to assemble the site, your next job is to create a storyboard (or as some designers call them, comps) to present to the client. You can easily create multiple variations of an idea by using a Fireworks feature normally used for animation. To use Fireworks to create a storyboard of your Web design for client review, follow these steps: 1. Launch Fireworks. 2. Open your mind-mapping session. 3. Refine the shapes and add text to the banner. 4. Flesh out the navigation menu section of the site by adding type to show each section of the site. 5. Add your client’s logo and any images that will appear when the site opens. Figure 2-3 shows one version of a Web site created in Fireworks.

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28 Part I: Building the Perfect Beast Figure 2-3: You can use an application like Fire- works to create a mock-up of your design. 6. Open the Frames palette, select the first frame, and then click the New/Duplicate Frame icon. Fireworks creates a carbon copy of the first frame. 7. Create a variation of the first frame. This will be the second design you present to the client. You can change the manner in which the menu is displayed, change the placement of objects, change colors, and so on. Figure 2-4 shows another variation of the design. 8. Create additional frames to create different variations of the design. 9. After creating different variations of your design, choose File➪Export to open the Export dialog box, shown in Figure 2-5. 10. Choose the desired file format in which to save the images and then, from the Save as Type drop-down menu, choose Frames to Files. 11. Name the document and then click Save. After you export the frames, you’ll have multiple files with the same base filename but appended with the number of the frame. You can now e-mail the individual versions to your client for consideration.

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Chapter 2: Before You Build Your Site 29 Figure 2-4: Create a frame for each variation ofyour design. Figure 2-5: You exporteach frame of yourstoryboard as a file.